Whispers
by kira66
Summary: Crossover between NCIS/Castle/Psych. When three seemingly unrelated deaths occur it brings to light a past that four men have been hiding for fifteen years. A past that would be better left alone
1. Chapter 1

The crime scene was run of the mill for NCIS' Major Case Response Team or MCRT for short. The dead Marine was a Lieutenant Colonel if the silver oak leaf on the collar of his uniform was anything to go by. Having been shot three times in the chest at a moderately close range didn't even put this death anywhere close to the most gruesome. And yet Tony, Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo Jr., couldn't figure out why McGee, Special Agent Timothy McGee, was staring at the body, for the past ten minutes, as if it had been mangled by a meat grinder. It wasn't like his friend and teammate to get sick at scenes, at least not anymore, but the younger man looked pale and he could just make out faint beads of sweat on his upper lip. "You okay there McSickly?" Tony asked as he moved around the scene taking pictures of the body, foot prints, and anything else of importance that caught his eye. "Yo Duckman!" He greeted when the elderly medical examiner arrived with the autopsy gremlin in tow. "Can you check his pockets for ID?"

Timothy McGee swallowed hard pushing back the vomit that was lingering in the back of his throat. He could vaguely hear Tony and Ducky but his focus was completely on the dead Marine. _It wasn't possible. And yet the proof was lying right in front of him._ Blinking he managed to catch part of Tony and Ducky's conversation. The Marine had no ID on him.

"No ID Boss." Tony told Gibbs as he appeared from talking to the local LEO's that had found the body. He had left Ziva to finish up.

Senior Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs frowned and knelt down to move the mans collar slightly. A tattoo was inked on his collarbone stark in contrast to his pale skin. "A bird holding a skull? You seen that before Ducky?" He questioned his old friend. Getting a negative reply he stood and noticed that McGee hadn't moved since arriving. "Hey! HEY!" He slapped the younger man on the back of his head. "You with me?"

"I…." McGee swallowed again. "I know him Boss." It was the tattoo that proved the impossible. "I mean I knew him." He focused on the older man. "He died fifteen years ago." He whispered and licked his lips.

"Obviously he didn't McWrong." Tony pointed out as he motioned to the body. "Ducky just said he's been dead for no more than ten hours let alone fifteen years."

"The man that died, what was his name?" Gibbs asked his younger agent while glaring at Tony. He wasn't saying McGee was wrong but he needed proof.

McGee looked back at the body willing himself to be wrong but he wasn't. He couldn't be. Not with that particular tattoo. "Adam, Adam Wallace." Pulling the strap of his unused camera from over his head he pushed it into Tony's hands and fled the scene; phone already out and dialing.

**

* * *

**

Detective Kate Beckett was used to Author Richard Castle's antics at a crime scene. She'd grown rather used to them actually. He would usually launch into his version of events that lead to the victims demise. But not today. Today he was quiet, almost solemn, as he gazed upon the face of their John Doe that had just been pulled from the river. According to Lanie he hadn't been in the water very long and estimated time of death between seven and ten hours ago. Not being able to take the silence anymore she bumped her shoulder into him. "You okay? Something happen to your mom or Alexis?" She questioned.

Blinking as if realizing where he was Richard Castle frowned. "Not that I know of why?"

"You just don't seem like yourself today." Kate replied. "Writers block?" She guessed again as the victims wallet was handed to her. Frowning she found nothing but cash. No ID in sight. "Have the lab run his prints." She told Kevin Ryan as he walked passed.

"Don't bother." Castle spoke again this time his voice a little stronger. Kneeling down beside Lanie he used a gloved finger to push aside the mans wet coat collar to reveal a tattoo on his collarbone. Sitting back on his heels he sighed.

"That a tat?" Javier Esposito asked as he knelt on the other side of the body. Squinting he tried to make out what it was. "Is that a bird?"

At this point Kate wasn't look at the tattoo but at Castle. "Castle how'd you know about the tattoo?" She asked.

Castle looked up from the body. "Because I know him." He stated simply. "Or knew him." His brow furrowed. "I haven't seen him in….fifteen years."

"You know our victim?" Ryan asked the obvious. "He have a name?"

"Thomas Maddox." Castle pushed himself to his feet. "Can you excuse me for a minute?" Not waiting for a reply he moved away from the body, on shaky legs, and stopped at fence that ran the length of the river bank. The chirping of his phone alerted him to a message and when he fished it out of his pocket and looked at the number he knew something was wrong. After listening to the message he punched in a number he only had stored in his memory and waited.

**

* * *

**

"This better be important!" Shawn Spencer announced as he dramatically entered the chiefs office with Gus in tow. "We were in the middle of enjoying our towering onion rings at Red Robin!" Plopping down in the nearest chair he looked expectantly at Detective Carlton Lassiter who was already present in the room along with Detective Juliet O'Hara and his father, Henry Spencer.

"I'd say it is Mister Spencer." Chief Karen Vick, being the closet to Shawn, handed him a folder containing a file. "Member of the Mayors staff was found murdered last night. So far we have no leads and the Mayor is getting….antsy…..with our lack of progress. He wants you working this case Mister Spencer, asked for you personally."

Shawn glanced over the file then handed it to Gus to read. "Realllly?" A cocky little smirk appeared on his lips. "That's because we're tight." He mock whispered to Juliet.

Lassiter snorted and rolled his eyes. "You and the Mayor are….tight? Yeah and I'm the Queen of England." He turned his attention back to the chief dismissing Shawn and his antics as unimportant. "I'm telling you we can handle this Chief. We don't need Spencer or Guster's help." He pleaded.

Chief Vick sighed. "It's out of my hands Carlton. He asked for Spencer and Spencer he shall get."

Slapping his hands together Shawn stood and put his hands to his temples. "I'm sensing BANG! BANG! BANG! Three to the chest!" He placed his hand over his heart and paused when he felt Gus tug on his arm. "What?" He asked out of the corner of his mouth.

"Did you look at this Shawn?" Gus asked in a hissed whisper and thrust the folder back into Shawn's hands.

"I just looked at it Gus!" Shawn exclaimed. "I looked at it then gave it to you! Dude you just watched me read it!" Dropping his eyes he noticed that Gus had folded over the top page to reveal a second page with pictures. Several were of the body which he skimmed over but stopped and froze on the last two. It was these pictures that Gus wanted him to look at. Both pictures were of a tattoo, the same tattoo, that had been discovered on the mans collarbone. His eyes moved back to the pictures of the body was they were too small for him to really tell anything so he tossed the folder onto the table. Without a word he and Gus both headed for the door with one location in mind; the morgue.

Henry frowned at his son and his best friends odder than usual behavior. "Shawn!" He called out only to be waved off by the retreating back of his son. "What am I going to do with him?" He asked more to himself than the others in the room then returned to his desk knowing his son would return in his own time.

"You think he got something already?" Juliet asked having complete faith in Shawn's _psychic _abilities.

"Oh please!" Lassiter rolled his eyes again and stormed out of the office with Juliet on his heels.

Meanwhile it didn't take Shawn and Gus long to arrive at and gain access to the morgue. Being friends with the ghoulish medical examiner didn't hurt either. But luckily for them they didn't run into anybody as they searched the freezer drawers for the right body. "Got it!" Shawn exclaimed as he pulled the body out of it's freezer.

Gus' usual squeamishness was replaced by a calm, cool, demeanor. "You think it's him?"

"Who else would it be?" Shawn asked as he pulled the sheet down away from the mans face. It didn't take long for him to make the connection between the facial features of the dead man and those of their old friend. "I thought he left when we did?"

"He did." Gus moved so he could get a better look at the face. Even under the neatly trimmed goatee he could make out a scar just below his lower lip. "I gave him that." He motioned with his hand to the scar. "Took three stitches to close it up."

Shawn nodded. "I remember. I also remember that it finally earned you your badge." Absentmindedly he reached up and rubbed his collarbone.

Gus shook his head. "He was out Shawn. He got his papers along with us so why is he dead? And why do they think his name is Karl Sandburg?"

"I dunno but we're gonna find out. We gonna find out who killed Jaxon Shaw." Shawn promised. Just then his phone along with Gus' began to ring. And without even looking at the numbers they spoke in unison to the others on the other end. "We need to meet!"


	2. Chapter 2

"Anyone seen Spencer today?" Chief Vick asked as she poked her head out of her office. The Mayor's office had called three times already and she was getting annoyed.

"Not since he and Guster left yesterday." Lassiter spoke up from behind his desk. The phone was cradled between his shoulder and ear and he was frantically typing on his computer. "How about you O'Hara?" His fingers paused as he spoke into the phone. "No I don't want to hold anymore! I've been on hold for an hour now and I've getting pretty pis….no!" He frowned. "They put me on hold again." The statement wasn't really _to_ anyone in particular.

"Nope I haven't seen him either." Juliet picked up her phone and dialed the familiar number only to get the very exuberant voicemail. "Shawn when you get this call me, the Chief is looking for you." She hung up and sat in silence for a moment. "You think it was odd that both Shawn and Gus knew our victim?" It was a question that had been rolling around in the back of her mind since yesterday and with Shawn and Gus MIA at the moment she was beginning to wonder.

Lassiter snorted. "When have those two ever done anything that wasn't _odd_? Remember last Christmas when they dressed up like toy soldiers and marched around on the pier on Christmas Eve? Said it was to appeal to the snow Gods to give us a white Christmas? I rest my case."

Juliet tilted her head to the side. "True." Shawn and Gus did do some wacky, crazy, things but she got the impression that this wasn't one of those things. "Should we just work the case until Shawn makes an appearance Chief?" She asked her still lurking Boss.

Chief Vick sighed. "Go ahead but keep trying to reach Spencer!" She barked as she retreated back into her office, phone ringing, to take another call from the Mayor's office, she was sure.

Elsewhere. "Dude this is so cool!" Shawn had his face plastered to the plane window. "Why don't I do this more often?"

"Because you're broke most of the time and I never leave my credit cards within your reach." Gus informed him as he flipped through a magazine.

"Oh yeah." Shawn smiled at the pretty lady pushing the drink cart. "Yes I'll have a pineapple daiquiri please." He requested. _First class so totally rocked! _He'd worry about his fathers reaction to the two first class tickets to Washington D.C. made on his credit card when they got back to Santa Barbara.

* * *

"What do you mean you're going out of town? We're in the middle of a murder investigation! Do I need to remind you that you know the victim? We got questions for you. Lots of questions." Beckett had followed Castle to the break room after he dropped the bombshell.

"My hands are tied." Castle held up his hands and crossed them at the wrist to demonstrate his point. "I gotta go to D.C." He began to prepare himself a latte.

Beckett frowned. "This have anything to do with the phone call you made after IDing the body yesterday?" She wanted to know.

Castle was quiet for a moment as he focused on his coffee. "Can you please just drop it?" He told her quietly as he finished and took a sip of the steaming liquid.

"I can't." Beckett countered. "Just tell me how you know him."

"I knew him fifteen years ago." Castle repeated what he said earlier as he continued to sip his drink.

"Ok so you were what twenty-four, twenty-five, when you knew him?" Beckett did the math in her head; being a diehard Richard Castle fan she knew his birthday off by heart. Not that she'd ever tell him that. "Did you meet at a club? Party? School?"

Castle knew Beckett was like a dog with a bone when she got hold of a puzzle. And right now he was the puzzle. "I'll take choice D, none of the above." He told her with a cocky little smile which faded quickly. "Look if I knew anything _recent_ about the guy I'd tell you. But how is me telling stories about my misbegotten youth going to help you solve this case?" It was a legitimate question. Setting his cup down he checked his watch then grabbed his coat that had been slung over a nearby chair. "Now I really have to go because my flight leaves in two hours and with all the extra security it's going to be a nightmare." With that said he left.

Beckett chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before heading to her desk. "Ryan where are we on getting a positive ID on the body?" She called out as she sat.

Pulling a page from the fax machine Ryan waved it in the air. "Got it right here. Dead guy is one Thomas Maddox age forty-five." He skimmed the page. "Says here he's former Air Force. Received an honorable discharge back in two-thousand." He sat down at his own desk and typed in the mans name. "Uh-oh." He looked up at Beckett across the room. "We got a problem."

"What?" Beckett got up and walked to his desk. "What is it?" Leaning down she scanned the mans employment history that was displayed on the screen. But it was the flashing red flag in the bottom right hand corner of the page that caught her attention. "He's been flagged? By who?" She questioned.

"Doesn't say but that can't be good, can it?" Ryan questioned as his eyes landed on Castle's empty chair. "You think he knows more than he's telling us?" He motioned with his head.

Beckett followed his eyes and sighed. "I honestly don't know."

* * *

"Gibbs been in to talk to you yet Agent McGee?" Director Leon Vance asked as he entered the conference room. He made himself comfortable in the chair right across the table from the one McGee was in.

"No." McGee shook his head slightly. "He's either letting me stew until boredom forces me to talk or he just hasn't gotten around to me yet."

Vance took a moment to survey the youngest member of Gibbs' team. "You don't seem broken up by either of those options." He pointed out as he chewed on his ever present toothpick. "Gibbs' worried about you. Thinks you're in some kind of trouble. He right?"

McGee frowned and wondered how his boss made his way to that line of thought. "Not at the moment." He answered his Director as honestly as possible.

"I gotta say that I was more than a little bit surprised when I received a phone call early this morning from Sec-Nav. Didn't even know he had my home number." Vance said in amusement before continuing. "He told me some pretty interesting things about an op codenamed _Whisper_. Also told me some very important people are flying into D.C. today and that I should ask _you_ for further details since even he isn't privy to everything the op entailed."

"I honestly don't know where to begin." McGee's frown deepened. "We were told never to speak of it to outsiders." He answered honestly.

Vance tilted his head to the side. He completely understood where the younger Agent was coming from. He, himself, had been on an op or two that had the same rules and as far as he knew still did. "Okay then how about starting at the beginning? I've always found that to be a good place to start a story."

McGee swallowed and nodded. "First thing you got to understand is that I was always bright. I skipped two grades in High School which didn't make me very popular with the older kids. I ended up in college when I was just sixteen and that's where Adam _recruited_ me. He was in one of those recruiter booths for the Marines and I never gave him a second look until he saved me from getting pounded by a group of seniors. He offered to teach me self-defense and with dad deployed….I guess I wanted someone to look up to that was actually there for more than a few months at a pop. After classes I'd meet up with him at the campus gym and he'd teach me a wide variety of self-defense styles. It was hard at first but then I started learning them faster and easier. Soon we were talking about other means of defense and he started asking me what I wanted t do once I finished my degree. I should have suspected he had ulterior motives but with brilliance doesn't always come common sense. For my eighteenth birthday he took me to meet a group of men and woman that he told me could change my life. That very day he became my official handler. I didn't find out until much later that he had been acting in that capacity for the previous two years. That's how certain he was that I'd join." He shook his head. "I was a young fool. I guess we all were." By then he was looking at the table top and not at Director Vance.

"So basically you were recruited and trained for this particular op when your were just sixteen? A kid?" Vance bit down a little harder on his toothpick.

"Yeah but we were all young when they started _grooming _us." McGee pointed out. "And our particular skill sets only improved as we got older and were able to take on a more rigorous training schedule. I was barely twenty when I received my sniper certification and…." He hesitated.

Vance folded his hands in front of him on the conference room table. "Your certification and what McGee?"

McGee reached up and scratched his collarbone which had started to itch. "My badge or that's what our handlers called them. They all had them and said it was their duty to pass it on. But in order to receive the badge we had to excel at our appointed skill set. I was the first of the group to get it." He couldn't keep the pride out of his voice not even after all these years.

"I take it the badge, as you are referring to it, is the same tattoo our dead Lieutenant Colonel has?" Vance already knew the answer to the question but wanted McGee to say it out loud. "It have a meaning?"

"We were never really told _what_ it means." This was even more taboo than talking about the op with outsiders. "I asked once and Adam told me that he thought the bird was us and the skull was death." McGee shifted uncomfortably. "And that'd _we'd_ always be the ones left standing no matter what."

Vance nodded. "That's a pretty big promise."

McGee shrugged. "Ended up being true. At the end of the day or at the end of a mission we all made it back alive and in one piece. All except…." He trailed off.

"All except the mission that you thought Adam Wallace died on?" Director Vance finished for him.

"Yeah when he never made it back to the rendezvous we went looking against the other handlers strict orders. We found him in an alley, thrown there like a piece of the trash he was laying on, bullet hole right through the forehead; dead center." McGee reached up and touched his own forehead in the spot. "We checked for a pulse, not that we were expecting one with that wound, and with time running out until our extraction we were forced to leave him there." It was a decision that haunted him for years. "Boomer was a good man Director. And as harsh as this may sound I think I was closer to him than my real dad." He glanced down at his watch. "Am I free to go? I need to pick my friends up from the airport."

Director Vance gave the younger Agent a long hard look then nodded. "Go on. I'll tell Gibbs that I talked to you and cleared you to leave." He stood and headed for the door but stopped before exiting. "Your unit was close, I get that, but I hope I don't got to tell you that revenge isn't the answer. I don't do I?"

McGee gave the Director his most apologetic smile. "I don't know whats going on exactly but I do know it'll be handled. Maybe not by me or my friends but an act such as this can't go unpunished." He was certain of that.

"That's what I thought." And with that said Director Leon Vance left the room, buttoning his suit jacket along the way.

"Its just the way things are." McGee said quietly as he quickly made his own exit before any of his teammates could corner him and demand answers. He didn't even bother to return to his desk instead deciding to take the fire stairs down to the main floor and leave from there. He knew he was being watched the moment he stepped foot outside NCIS headquarters but he brushed it off when he caught sight of a hastily concealed Ziva. "Not today." He said to himself as he ducked beside the building and caught a ride out with one of the other departing NCIS teams. He had Special Agent Agor drop him several blocks from the navy yard where he then called for a cab to take him to the airport. Once there he rented a car, his friends would need one anyways, and settled in to wait for his friends' arrivals.


End file.
